The United States is different than all other countries in the world. While there is a central government, there are also 50 state governments, and the state governments have a lot of authority in many areas. Online gaming is one such area.
Slots Play Casinos is well aware of this and in this article, we will look at some news developments in the world of real money online casino gaming specifically as it relates to the United States.
New York State Restricts Online Sports Betting
As we said, every state in the US can regulate all forms of gaming and gambling. Some forms of gambling have been well established in many, if not all, states such as land-based casino gambling, which was once the exclusive way to play casino games in the US. Las Vegas became a kind of gamblers’ mecca.
Horse racing is another form of gambling that has become “traditional” in the States. As a result of the near monopoly that parimutuel gambling on horse racing became, when online casinos entered the market, these vested interests did everything they could to restrict or even ban online casino gaming.
This did not succeed for the most part. So, some states are trying to restrict online casino gaming in any way they can.
This is where the new proposed law in New York comes in.
The law attempts to restrict online sports betting in a few ways. Sports betting is not exactly the same as online casino gaming but observers such as Slots Play Casinos see the potential for extending the restrictions placed on sports betting to online casinos as well.
Details of the Proposed Law
The bill “amends” existing law in several ways:
- To change betting rules.
- The change in the use of credit cards for depositing.
- The change deposit allowances.
- To restrict some kinds of advertising at sports betting sites.
Sports bettors would be restricted to a maximum deposit and maximum bets totaling $5000 in both cases on a per day basis. This is per day, which sounds like overkill for most sports bettors. How many sports bettors actually deposit or bet more than $5000 in a single day?
A restriction on the use of credit cards for deposits would simply send all of the credit card users to ewallets or cryptocurrencies.
The section on advertising is also a bit odd as it restricts the word “bonus” even when a sports betting site is offering a genuine bonus.
Will These Restrictions Carry Over to Online Casinos?
No online casino is concerned about a $5000 daily gaming restriction. A deposit restriction would hamper some casinos that offer a huge Welcome Package. It would also restrict the activity of true high rollers. Nevertheless, a deposit restriction of $5000 per day would not affect most online casinos or gamers.
However, governments are not often content with a one-off set of restrictions. It would very much restrict online casino gaming if the $5000 limit were made per month or per quarter. So, online casinos can be expected to fight to have this part of the new bill removed altogether.
Will a Future Bill Restrict Credit Card Use Even Further?
As we said, restricting deposits directly to an online casino via a credit card is a manageable restriction. What would happen, however, if the restriction were extended to using a credit card to send money to an ewallet with the express purpose of then depositing that money to an online casino account?
How would the government know that the gamers made an ewallet deposit with the specific intention to send the money to an online casino?
In short, all of these new restrictions look like big legal challenges ahead for online casino gaming as well as online sports betting. Now, given that online gaming and sports betting are both billion-dollar revenue generators, you might ask yourself why a state government might want to restrict those markets.
The reason is that there are powerful gambling interests, such as horse racing and state lotteries, that the state governments want to protect.
Should There be Any Restrictions on Gaming or Gambling?
We think that there should be, as the news of the passing of Pope Francis shows. As we write this, Pope Francis has passed away and sports betting sites are now taking bets on who will be elected by the Cardinals to be the next Pope.
This has nothing to do with religion. The passing of a Pope is news all over the world and people wait to hear who the next Pope will be because a Pope has a great deal of influence on millions of Catholics.
Still, sports betting on who might be the next Pope is the personification of gambling and might very well be a bet that a government might restrict.
Binary Options Are Another Example of Gambling Personified
As a gambling mode, a binary options trade asks players to predict where a financial asset will be in a given time. It could be 15 minutes, an hour, or longer. The reason this form of so-called investing is true gambling is because all markets fluctuate. An asset that is rising or falling steadily over the near to long term might very well rise or fall against the trend in the next hour.
How Can Governments Best Restrict Gambling?
The key is to put the responsibility on the gaming or gambling site. This should apply to every place where bets are made, from the race track to land-based casinos to online casinos and sports betting sites, and places that sell lottery tickets.
Compliance with such wide-ranging restrictions would be both fair and very difficult. That is why it is highly unlikely that any state government will put all gaming and gambling enterprises in a single category for regulation. The vested interests will stay vested and the sites that are relatively easy to restrict will be restricted if this law passes and is emulated by other states.
Casinos can help gamers self-regulate. Actually, self-regulation, called at the time as self-government, was one of the founding ideals of the United States! An online casino or sports betting site can, and most do, follow a person’s betting history and can ask a player whose bets have gone high over the recent near term to show that they are financially able to make such large bets. If the answer is “no” or if the player does not respond to an inquiry, the casino or sports betting site can temporarily cut the person off from gambling at their site.
Slots Play Casinos sees its role as reporting on news as in this article and reporting directly on games and casinos. We are embarking on a more news-heavy articles format without losing sight of casinos themselves, games themselves, gaming strategy, and the sheer fun of playing online casino games.
We try to publish a couple of articles per week so to keep abreast of all things pertaining to online casino gaming…
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